Business Travel Startup Travelstop Strengthens Its Presence in Asia, Launches in Seven Markets

Focus on regional diversity in AsiaAsia is home to the fastest growing business travel market in the world, accounting for more than a third of the US$1 trillion annual global spend. However, business travel varies substantially across the region, and existing solutions often do not adequately cater to these diverse requirements.

Travelstop plans to tackle these challenges by offering a truly localised product experience. "Many companies in Asia have offices in multiple countries across the region. Our goal is to provide these users with the best possible experience in their local language and currency, while ensuring that we offer the most relevant booking options," says Prashant Kirtane, Travelstop's co-founder and CEO. "We now offer the largest selection of flights in the region, with over 800 carriers, including most regional and low-cost carriers".

Travelstop is now available in seven languages, including Bahasa Indonesia, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, to cater to a broader audience in the Asian region. Besides local languages and currencies, Travelstop also offers support for regional tax differences, reporting formats, payment options, and eventually plans to introduce customer service to its users in local languages.

New features for travel managers and business travellersTravelstop has also added several new features to further support business travellers and travel managers within the region. With its new "Book for Others" feature, Travelstop aims to improve the productivity of travel managers by replacing a largely manual process, with a simple, online process to book travel for employees within a company. This is particularly useful for companies that prefer to more "tightly control" the business travel booking process or in countries where technology acceptance is generally lower.

For business travellers, adherence to a company's travel policy is both cumbersome and challenging, often resulting in business travel bookings that are either over-budget or out-of-policy. To address this growing issue, Travelstop is introducing a simple and intuitive way for travel managers to set up "Business Travel Policies" for all their employees in just a few minutes. Once set up, business travel bookings that are outside of travel policies are automatically flagged during the booking process, allowing companies to improve overall compliance and reduce costs. Countries with a higher acceptance of technology and companies in the region that are shifting away from a more "tightly controlled" business travel process will benefit from this feature as a way to provide employees with more flexibility while keeping costs under control.

Mobile-first experiences for AsiaDespite all its regional diversity, the Asian region continues to see a rapid increase in the adoption of mobile devices across countries in the region. Globally, Asia has the largest share of mobile internet traffic, with 61% of its population using mobile devices to go online. It is therefore no longer enough for businesses to create mobile-friendly versions that are just smartphone-sized replicas of their desktop platform. Businesses need to design mobile-first experiences to be more relevant and keep pace within the region.

Today, Travelstop is also launching its iPhone app to help users access their trip information and manage their business expenses on-the-go. "Our goal is to make employees more productive; they no longer have to return from their business trips and spend hours dealing with the much-dreaded expense claims process," says Altaf Dhamani, Travelstop's co-founder and Chief Product Officer. "We're leveraging native device capabilities to make in-trip expense reporting a breeze. Our focus is to provide an exceptional mobile experience for users, regardless of device".

Since its launch in August 2018, Travelstop has already been adopted by a diverse set of companies across Asia, including several high-growth organizations such as RedDoorz, Funding Societies, S P Jain School of Global Management, Dot Property. The startup has successfully raised US$1.2 million in funding from investors led by SeedPlus, a Singapore-based venture capital firm, and travel industry veterans from Expedia and Yahoo!

"Travelstop is incredible! We haven't seen a better product experience and feature-set for business travel before," says Amit Saberwal, Founder and CEO at RedDoorz. "Travelstop has replaced the complex, manual process of business travel and expense management with a simpler, modern, and more elegant solution that just works".

Travelstop for iPhone is available for download in the App Store today, with plans for an Android version to be available in the next few months. https://itunes.apple.com/app/travelstop/id1439172407^[1]

About TravelstopTravelstop is a revolutionary platform aimed at modernising and simplifying business travel. Using advanced technology and consumer-centric design, Travelstop offers tools that simplify and automate the entire business travel experience - right from trip planning to expense reimbursements. Travelstop is meant to help companies save on costs by providing an affordable end-to-end solution. Backed by world-class VCs and notable individual investors, who bring a wealth of experience from companies including Yahoo!, Expedia and HomeAway, Travelstop is well positioned to shape the future of business travel. To learn more, visit travelstop.com

Company LeadershipTravelstop is led by its management team, who bring a depth of experience in the travel industry to their roles, including:- Prashant Kirtane, CEO and co-founder: Seasoned leader with 20 years of experience in senior management positions at Yahoo! and Expedia. Also founded travelmob.com - acquired by HomeAway-Expedia- Vijay Aggarwal, CTO and co-founder: Technology specialist with 16 years of experience in senior management positions at Yahoo!, travelmob, and HomeAway- Altaf Dhamani, CPO and co-founder: Product professional with over 12 years of experience building products for companies like Yahoo!, travelmob and HomeAway

For Media Enquiries:Darren BeckPRecious Communications for TravelstopT: +65 6303 0567E: [email protected] ^[2]

Topic: New ServiceSectors: Travel & Tourism, Venture Capital, Local, ASEAN^[3][4][5][6] http://www.acnnewswire.com From the Asia Corporate News Network

Copyright © 2019 ACN Newswire. All rights reserved. A division of Asia Corporate News Network.

References

1. ^{^} https://itunes.apple.com/app/travelstop/id1439172407 (itunes.apple.com)
2. ^{^} [email protected] (www.acnnewswire.com)
3. ^{^} Travel & Tourism (www.acnnewswire.com)
4. ^{^} Venture Capital (www.acnnewswire.com)
5. ^{^} Local (www.acnnewswire.com)
6. ^{^} ASEAN (www.acnnewswire.com)